It is not that simple, I am afraid. Religion is but a tool of control here. Get those guys off religion and they will act like before, just basing their crap on "racial supremacy", "manifest destiny" or some other bullshit along this lines.
We, ourselves, are not free from this. Look at the amount of "kill brown people" posts that topics like this brings up every time on slashdot. The true root of barbarism is an unreflected "We are different, therefore you are inferior". This mechanism exists entirely independent of religion, though I agree that religion mostly does not help.
It's obviously not about complete clearing of the path, but rather of, well, dynamic dominance in his part of space. The planets do that, even if some orbit crossing or near orbit asteroids are left. Pluto and Eris are in a whole crowd of crap and have not in any way achieved a dominant position in that crowd of crap. In the end, it's just nomenclature
Ahh, yeah. Hadn't thought of that one. I think you got the core advantage nailed down there. Well, I am just a biochemist. Everything above a purified single protein is too complex for me:P
Sure thing - I completely agree that the domesticated species will survive. As you say, there are enough of them to retain sufficient diversity. Guess my point was indeed kinda trivial - the evolutionary advantage of lifestock is temporary, as all evolutionary advantages are. They are highly adapted to coexistence with human civilization. It still feels like a dead end niche, though.
I agree that dogs and pigs will probably have the best chances. Dairy cows, on the other hand? Don't see much chance for them - they'll be dead within weeks in the wild given their milk overproduction and tendency to get a fresh udder infection every other week.
That's an unfortunate consequence of the lack of a "Perfect example for the sad state of humanity"-mod option.
May I in turn suggest ending your overseas military conflicts, use the cash to repair your ruined infrastructure, thereby raising employment rates and getting the local economies going? Then you can start to worry about your exports and fix your immigration system. Oh, and fuck that "leader of the free world" thing. I am part of the free world, and I feel no desire whatsoever to have any leader at all, let alone the US.
Compared to the money you guys are pissing into the wind for no return whatsoever, this telescope is a drop in the bucket. And if you have any interest at all to get your exports going, developing your local high-tech talent with projects like this might be a first step...
That is actually not the case. Look at the transcript posted upthread. She said that no British politician should be able to complain about stoning in Muslim countries, because no British politician is in the moral position to do so, given the criminal nature of the Iraq war. In the same interview, she spoke out against human rights violations in Iran - but in her opinion, only people without bloody hands are morally right in doing so, e. g. Human Rights organizations.
So she did not condone stoning, she just made a point about moral corruption in the British government.
The asshattery following that statement kinda supports her position, in my opinion...
You know, if you quote latin names for logical fallacies to sound superior, you should perhaps learn to identify said fallacies first. There is not a single ad hominem fallacy in there. Just a bunch of plain old - and much needed - insults. Not to speak of the fact that an argumentum ad hominem is first of all a rhetorical figure, but not necessarily in all cases a fallacy.
The survival trait seems to be "being tasty and easy to raise in great number". If that really is an evolutionary advantage in the long run remains to be seen. While the number of cattle, pigs and chicken greatly increased compared to the wild, the genetic diversity of their population strongly decreased. This is a severe disadvantage that hampers quick adaption should the conditions change. In case of the collapse of technological civilization, be it peak oil, nuclear war, an asteroid impact or the inevitable zombie apocalypse, most overbred lifestock animals are fucked.
In a few million of years, our civilization should still be detectable on a geological level. We have dug out massive amounts of resources from concentrated deposits and distributed them all over the place. If I was tasked to look for traces of an ancient civilization, I'd look at resource distribution. Stuff missing from where it should be geologically at a significant amount? Someone been there before. That's the strongest argument for us being the first around here - we don't see any depletion of easily accessible resources.
You are pressing a bit hard identifying "distribution of wealth" a Marxist idea. After all, that is a simple fact of any economic system. Marx, of course, did a quite thorough analysis of the mechanisms of distribution in capitalist systems, identifying mechanisms leading to the accumulation of wealth in the hand of those holding control over the means of production. You are right, of course, that the Marxian analysis is still, and always will be part of economical thinking in any system.
Your main fault, of course, is trying to get your reading of Marx into the debate. To partake in the popular discourse, you don't need to read and actually should not have read Marx. All you need is the equation "Marx equals Communism equals Empire of Evil equals economic inefficiency". Also, "Communism equals Socialism equals Nazism, because, after all, they had 'Socialist' in their party's name". Absorb this, young padawan, and you shall be prepared. Using words for what they mean has gone out of style a couple of years ago, I fear.
Good story, too. The perfidious thing with the AIs in Accelerando is in my opinion, though, that the AIs do not necessarily get better at trading, but at gaming the system - creating new shell companies faster than anything can me leveraged against them. Probably the most realistic scenario, considering what goes on these days with automated trading.
So basically stock market now is just another incarnation of COREWARS?
So a common folk unleashes her DWARF. Then the trading house unleashes ANTIDWARF to get all the money from DWARF. Then two norwegians run ANTIANTIDWARF and eat up both DWARF and ANTIDWARF profits.
That it basically how Dan Simmons describes the evolution of the TechnoCore in "Hyperion"- a huge, and largely malignant cluster of AIs. They start out as a COREWARS-like scenario which gets loose on the net, leading to the evolution of increasingly more parasitic and hyper-parasitic pieces of code that finally reach sentience. Now couple that with the AI-economy from Charles Stross' "Saturn's Children", apply to current trading algorithms and be afraid, be very afraid...
Well, from someone with admin rights to the Universe, i'd expect a wee bit more than a puny diamond pyramid. Encoding a Message of the Day in binary within the cosmic background radiation, yeah, that would be a sign.
Well housing is expensive here, but solar installations are not really the thing to blame that on. The average house is way more solidly built than the average US house - always cellared, always a solid brick structure. That's going to cost more than wooden houses I used to live in while I was working in California. A huge factor for the price are quite high demand on energy efficiency, insulation and such.
As for the appearance - never seen anything like a HOA here, we are spared this pest. My neighbor can say fuck all when I decide to plow over my lawn and plant potatoes next year. Cities have regulations, but those mostly cover the rough appearance of houses in a certain region, e.g. every new built house along this street has to have a roof angle between x and y degrees. This has become more relaxed, though, lately. When my parents built their house in the early 80s, you really had to have a homogenous look in every quarter. Anyway, there is no chance that city regulations could forbid solar panels. They would get their arse kicked in court within weeks. Besides, the things are neither ugly nor do they obstruct the view. How did you come up with that?
Careful there. Your argument only holds true for certain physical things. That is what a philosopher would call ontologically objective facts - they indeed exist regardless of belief in them. There is, however, a whole category of facts that are ontologically subjective - they only exist, because we believe in them. "Obama is the President of America" is such a fact. If the majority of Americans stop to believe in that fact, it ceases to be true.
There certainly should an isotopic effect on the IR spectrum of methane. I have no experience with remote sensing, though, but I seriously doubt that one could resolve that difference remotely. Best bet would still be to get a lander down there and do the measurement locally.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not that simple, I am afraid. Religion is but a tool of control here. Get those guys off religion and they will act like before, just basing their crap on "racial supremacy", "manifest destiny" or some other bullshit along this lines.
We, ourselves, are not free from this. Look at the amount of "kill brown people" posts that topics like this brings up every time on slashdot. The true root of barbarism is an unreflected "We are different, therefore you are inferior". This mechanism exists entirely independent of religion, though I agree that religion mostly does not help.
It helps us in the long run. Sure, in the short run, supplanting a monster with a bigger, more atrocious one helps. But where does that get us?
If there is anything to the claim that we represent the "free world", we have to play relatively clean, lest it becomes nothing but shallow rhetoric.
It's obviously not about complete clearing of the path, but rather of, well, dynamic dominance in his part of space. The planets do that, even if some orbit crossing or near orbit asteroids are left. Pluto and Eris are in a whole crowd of crap and have not in any way achieved a dominant position in that crowd of crap. In the end, it's just nomenclature
Ahh, yeah. Hadn't thought of that one. I think you got the core advantage nailed down there. Well, I am just a biochemist. Everything above a purified single protein is too complex for me :P
Sure thing - I completely agree that the domesticated species will survive. As you say, there are enough of them to retain sufficient diversity. Guess my point was indeed kinda trivial - the evolutionary advantage of lifestock is temporary, as all evolutionary advantages are. They are highly adapted to coexistence with human civilization. It still feels like a dead end niche, though.
Oh well, as you see, my other reply to you ate a troll mod, too - the bury brigade is decidedly bipartisan...
I agree that dogs and pigs will probably have the best chances. Dairy cows, on the other hand? Don't see much chance for them - they'll be dead within weeks in the wild given their milk overproduction and tendency to get a fresh udder infection every other week.
That's an unfortunate consequence of the lack of a "Perfect example for the sad state of humanity"-mod option.
May I in turn suggest ending your overseas military conflicts, use the cash to repair your ruined infrastructure, thereby raising employment rates and getting the local economies going? Then you can start to worry about your exports and fix your immigration system. Oh, and fuck that "leader of the free world" thing. I am part of the free world, and I feel no desire whatsoever to have any leader at all, let alone the US.
Compared to the money you guys are pissing into the wind for no return whatsoever, this telescope is a drop in the bucket. And if you have any interest at all to get your exports going, developing your local high-tech talent with projects like this might be a first step...
That is actually not the case. Look at the transcript posted upthread. She said that no British politician should be able to complain about stoning in Muslim countries, because no British politician is in the moral position to do so, given the criminal nature of the Iraq war. In the same interview, she spoke out against human rights violations in Iran - but in her opinion, only people without bloody hands are morally right in doing so, e. g. Human Rights organizations.
So she did not condone stoning, she just made a point about moral corruption in the British government.
The asshattery following that statement kinda supports her position, in my opinion...
You know, if you quote latin names for logical fallacies to sound superior, you should perhaps learn to identify said fallacies first. There is not a single ad hominem fallacy in there. Just a bunch of plain old - and much needed - insults. Not to speak of the fact that an argumentum ad hominem is first of all a rhetorical figure, but not necessarily in all cases a fallacy.
The survival trait seems to be "being tasty and easy to raise in great number". If that really is an evolutionary advantage in the long run remains to be seen. While the number of cattle, pigs and chicken greatly increased compared to the wild, the genetic diversity of their population strongly decreased. This is a severe disadvantage that hampers quick adaption should the conditions change. In case of the collapse of technological civilization, be it peak oil, nuclear war, an asteroid impact or the inevitable zombie apocalypse, most overbred lifestock animals are fucked.
How would a robot successfully discipline your child?
EX-TER-MI-NATE!
In a few million of years, our civilization should still be detectable on a geological level. We have dug out massive amounts of resources from concentrated deposits and distributed them all over the place. If I was tasked to look for traces of an ancient civilization, I'd look at resource distribution. Stuff missing from where it should be geologically at a significant amount? Someone been there before. That's the strongest argument for us being the first around here - we don't see any depletion of easily accessible resources.
There go the next few days. Thanks a lot for this tip. You'll meet me again on /. after I am Elite...
+1 Groan Inducing.
Now excuse me while I go to find my most atrocious Hawaiian shirt.
Docking computers are for pussies. Real men dock by hand. Now excuse me while I go searching for a version of Elite and an emulator to run it on.
You are pressing a bit hard identifying "distribution of wealth" a Marxist idea. After all, that is a simple fact of any economic system. Marx, of course, did a quite thorough analysis of the mechanisms of distribution in capitalist systems, identifying mechanisms leading to the accumulation of wealth in the hand of those holding control over the means of production. You are right, of course, that the Marxian analysis is still, and always will be part of economical thinking in any system.
Your main fault, of course, is trying to get your reading of Marx into the debate. To partake in the popular discourse, you don't need to read and actually should not have read Marx. All you need is the equation "Marx equals Communism equals Empire of Evil equals economic inefficiency". Also, "Communism equals Socialism equals Nazism, because, after all, they had 'Socialist' in their party's name". Absorb this, young padawan, and you shall be prepared. Using words for what they mean has gone out of style a couple of years ago, I fear.
Good story, too. The perfidious thing with the AIs in Accelerando is in my opinion, though, that the AIs do not necessarily get better at trading, but at gaming the system - creating new shell companies faster than anything can me leveraged against them. Probably the most realistic scenario, considering what goes on these days with automated trading.
So basically stock market now is just another incarnation of COREWARS?
So a common folk unleashes her DWARF. Then the trading house unleashes ANTIDWARF to get all the money from DWARF. Then two norwegians run ANTIANTIDWARF and eat up both DWARF and ANTIDWARF profits.
That it basically how Dan Simmons describes the evolution of the TechnoCore in "Hyperion"- a huge, and largely malignant cluster of AIs. They start out as a COREWARS-like scenario which gets loose on the net, leading to the evolution of increasingly more parasitic and hyper-parasitic pieces of code that finally reach sentience. Now couple that with the AI-economy from Charles Stross' "Saturn's Children", apply to current trading algorithms and be afraid, be very afraid...
Well, from someone with admin rights to the Universe, i'd expect a wee bit more than a puny diamond pyramid. Encoding a Message of the Day in binary within the cosmic background radiation, yeah, that would be a sign.
Well housing is expensive here, but solar installations are not really the thing to blame that on. The average house is way more solidly built than the average US house - always cellared, always a solid brick structure. That's going to cost more than wooden houses I used to live in while I was working in California. A huge factor for the price are quite high demand on energy efficiency, insulation and such.
As for the appearance - never seen anything like a HOA here, we are spared this pest. My neighbor can say fuck all when I decide to plow over my lawn and plant potatoes next year. Cities have regulations, but those mostly cover the rough appearance of houses in a certain region, e.g. every new built house along this street has to have a roof angle between x and y degrees. This has become more relaxed, though, lately. When my parents built their house in the early 80s, you really had to have a homogenous look in every quarter. Anyway, there is no chance that city regulations could forbid solar panels. They would get their arse kicked in court within weeks. Besides, the things are neither ugly nor do they obstruct the view. How did you come up with that?
In Soviet Russia, theory unifies YOU!
Which is, actually, quite in line with Marxism-Leninism...
Careful there. Your argument only holds true for certain physical things. That is what a philosopher would call ontologically objective facts - they indeed exist regardless of belief in them. There is, however, a whole category of facts that are ontologically subjective - they only exist, because we believe in them. "Obama is the President of America" is such a fact. If the majority of Americans stop to believe in that fact, it ceases to be true.
Why are you commenting on slashdot instead of having tea and crumpets with the roaches under your sink?
Because occasionally I need a break from all that intellectual discussion, so I turn to slashdot for some mindless entertainment.
There certainly should an isotopic effect on the IR spectrum of methane. I have no experience with remote sensing, though, but I seriously doubt that one could resolve that difference remotely. Best bet would still be to get a lander down there and do the measurement locally.